crimson
by i'd sink us to swim
Summary: zombie!au told from Liz's point of view


"—and, as you can see behind me, there is little that can be done at this point. Police are positioned throughout the town, helping where they can, but there is little hope of controlling this situation at the moment. It is advised that citizens stay indoors, locking all entrances and closing all blinds. Do not draw attention to yourselves. This is the best that can be done, and it may ensure your safety as well as can be, at least until assistance from the military—"

Liz sighed as she watched the news report on her smart phone. She was positioned outside the hospital, attempting to control the influx of people rushing to safety, while also providing some security from the… _things_… that were currently crawling through the town, bringing destruction and pain and misery and fear and—

Her inner tirades were interrupted by a particularly shrill and ear-piercing scream. Sheriff Forbes' eyes flickered up from her screen to notice one of the creepers with their hand around a pretty blonde girl's throat. For a moment, the woman's heart stopped its steady beating—the girl looked so much like her daughter from afar…

…her little daughter who wasn't quite so little anymore. That didn't mean that Liz was not going to protect her with all she had. Liz, however, did have a duty to the people, and she had to keep to that, even if it meant that she had to leave Caroline with her pseudo-uncle, Logan Fell, in the meantime.

As sheriff of the little town of Mystic Falls, Liz felt that the last thing she should be worrying about was fear, but she stayed paralyzed in her vehicle, watching the horrible scene unfold. (She was totally handing in her badge after this whole thing blew over—or, _if _it ever did.)

The thing—oh, what the heck, _zombie_ (for that's what it was, a walking corpse)—held a tight grip of the girl's neck, squeezing without mercy as she flailed helplessly. Her hands scrambled to keep the zombie's face, particularly his teeth, away. The fight she was putting up, however, was slowly ebbing out of her. The zombie was inching closer as the girl's strength slowly slipped. Closer, closer closer closer, _closer_…

Liz blinked in surprise. One moment the zombie was centimeters from a bite that would have done more than just sting—with her still sitting, paralyzed—and the next, the zombie was gone, and the poor girl was left lying on the ground, a pool of blood forming where her knee had struck the pavement.

Surprisingly enough, the blood was what finally got Liz moving, and she exited the car quickly. With a few jogged steps, Liz was by the girl's side. She seemed to be in complete shock, but, as Liz knelt down next to her, the woman could make out some mutterings.

"Finn, no. Where's he? _Finn_. And 'Lijah. Oh shit, Nik. No. Nonono. _No_."

"Shh shh," Liz coaxed, but the girl kept up with her muttering.

Liz gave up and focused her attention on girl's injuries. It seemed that, other than her bleeding knee, the only other wound she suffered from was the rapidly forming bruises that were eerily similar to fingerprints—the _zombie's_, Liz realized.

"Sweetie," Liz began, hoping the girl was listening, "I'm just gonna—"

However, as the woman brought her hand towards the girl's knee, intending to feel whether it was broken or not, the girl jumped violently to her feet.

_Well_, Liz thought_, at the very least, she definitely did not fracture anything_.

She shook herself from her thoughts and turned her head in the direction the girl was facing. From what Liz could see, there were two young men emerging from a cluster of trees close by. They were both dressed immaculately, if one ignored the blood that was splattered miscellaneously on their button-up shirts and dress pants. One looked to be around twenty, and the other was probably eighteen. They both wore expressions of pain far beyond their years, though Liz felt that, by this point, there was little to no chance that any person was carefree anymore. Not in this part of the world, at least.

"_Oh_, thank God," the girl breathed out. And suddenly, it clicked in Liz's mind. These two boys were the ones who had saved the girl. (They were the ones who had saved the girl when _she couldn't_.) Shame lit up inside Liz, but she ignored it as best as she could.

Liz was brought back to the present by the girl running forward, (yup, definitely nothing wrong with that knee… other than the bloody mess it was creating on her skirt and the ground,) and Liz watched as she embraced the two, all three coming together in a hug.

Another thing clicked in Liz's mind as she observed this hug. Whoever these two boys were, the girl was seriously attached to them. This led Liz to believe that these were two of the boys she had been muttering about just moments before.

Finn. 'Lijah. Nik. There was only two of the three present, however.

Before the question could form in her mind, the girl spoke it aloud.

"W- where's Finn? Is he…?"

One of the boys—he was blond—nodded his head where it was rested in the crook of the girl's neck.

"No. No. _No_." She pulled back from the two to look them in the eyes. The girl's own eyes let loose a few of the tears that had been building since…. Well, Liz did not know exactly, but she knew that those bright eyes had been damp since before Liz stepped out of her car.

"Yes, Rebekah," the older one replied.

"No, Elijah, brother, please," she—Rebekah—begged. "Nik?"

Nik let out a small sob, and Rebekah attached herself to him again, while Elijah pulled him close.

Engrossed as she was in the scene playing out before her, Liz did not hear her end creeping up behind her until it was too late. She saw the eldest boy's eyes widen in her direction, but she did not comprehend the warning he was trying to pass to her until she felt the dull pain of teeth sinking into her shoulder.

All of her senses dimmed; light became dark, chaos became sweet silence, feeling became numbness, and curiosity slowly faded to apathy.

With a small gasp, Liz fell to her knees, and the process of becoming a walking corpse slowly began.


End file.
